As I argue in my book, Patience With God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism), maybe if there is a God, or if Jesus spoke truth about how we are to care for others or if the Light of Love in my life has taught me anything, then the best thing a believer in any actual God can do is to admit that a lot of the Bible is hate-filled blasphemy.
There is a verse in Timothy that says that all Scripture is for our edification. This verse, not the many Bible stories of the many killings "ordained by God," is the scariest verse in the Bible.
In Timothy (3:16) we read; "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."
The "all Scripture" being spoken of is the Old Testament. The New Testament was just being written at the time. And these days, of course, for conservative Christians, the word "Scripture" covers "their" part of the Bible too.
How scary is this verse? Well, take every vile verse reeking of barbarity in the Bible and append the "All scripture is..." ending to it.
In this unsettling thought experiment for instance take St. Paul's New Testament "advice" to women: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." (1 Timothy 2:12) Then add, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." End of discussion! Be Silent!
Or...
"This is what the Lord Almighty says... 'Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Samuel 15:3) "But Christ has changed all that mean stuff" the hopeful Evangelical says. Not so fast! "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."
Or...
"So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, 'Get up; let's go.' But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home." (Judges 19:25-28) "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable..."
Or...
"Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel." (1 Peter 2:18) Say again? "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." And by the way, that pro-slavery teaching is a New Testament verse to boot!
When rape is sort of "condemned" in the Bible, a woman's rights aren't even mentioned. "If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife" (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). According to the Bible, the raped women are forced to marry the rapist and the only person made whole is her father! Never mind, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable..."
There is another choice besides rejecting religion outright or adopting an all-the-Bible-is-true fundamentalism, one too rarely made. The fact is too few religious people are willing to suffer the loss of approval by their religious leaders, friends and family to make this other choice: embrace faith in God by thinking for themselves and openly reject the parts of one's scriptures outright that fly in the face of fact, compassion and decency.
"But where would that leave me?" they ask. "I'd be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty!" they say. Yes, and perhaps that's the only honest place to be.
Maybe the actual God doesn't like -- or accept -- "The God-Of-The-Bible" any more than rational and compassionate people do. I hope that's true because if it's not then it turns out that most people are a lot nicer than their "God," which begs the question: Where did that niceness come from... if (that is) God created everything?
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back
Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer
Andrew Pessin: Do Religious People Really Believe in God?
Pete Enns: Atheists Are Believers, Too
New Testament TESTS: Authenticity and Authority.
The first passing: all 27 books were accepted by the Council of Carthage, ~397 AD.
There are more than 5000 manuscripts of the New Testament....the best attested document of ALL ancient writings. There are numerous fragments dating from ~135 -800 AD written on papyrus. There are hundreds of accurate parchment copies produced in the 4th-5th centuries. There are ~86,000 quotations in old Latin, Latin, Syriac, and Egyptian translationsfrom the 3rd century. There is more scholarly work done on this piece of literature than any other in existence.(Ryrie 2084)
To understand Paul's treatment of women and the context of the controvesial passages, see: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/fem09.html
Regarding the destruction of the Amalekites/Cannanites see:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qamorite.html
Regarding the rape of the poor woman at the hands of a mob: This supposed implication against God is easily answered. Simply because something is recorded in the Bible does not mean that God condoned the behavior. It is simply a record of what happened. There are certainly lessons that can be learned when these verses are put back into the context of the story from which they were taken.
To see what the Bible actually teaches about slavery see:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qnoslave.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qnoslavent.html
How does the Bible really treat rapists, women and why See:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/virginity.html
Sorry, I don't normally post web links but the author's accusation are too numerous and the responses would be too lengthy to post in a comment box.
Mark, the first wrote about 40 years after Jesus death. Mathew and Luke wrote during the eighties and John in about 100 CE.
But these gospel accounts are quite different. They were more concerned about the meaning of the religious life of Jesus than about the historical facts.
New Testament scholars point out that the gospels account of Jesus passion and death are hopelessly confused and the facts have been changed. Very few of the actual words of Jesus have been recorded; this makes the gospel a hotchpotch of legends, untruth, a bit of pornography and a lot of important religious truth also. It is difficult to sieve the truth from the concoction.
"God the Father" is clearly metaphorical, as are all the human attributes ascribed to an ineffable being, including justice and mercy. The matter of He/She depends only on the grammar of some languages, rather than those others which do not dictate rigid pronoun distinctions.
Medieval Cistercians are notable, among other things, for their persistent use of the metaphor of Jesus as Mother, because they wished to express specific kinds of relationship. Metaphors may express partial truths, but to confuse them with literal descriptions is childish.
Your affrontry at the obvious unimpeachable masculinity of the Hebrew God, not to mention, in doing so by indirect insinuation of any definite gender, either of a Greek statute, or animal, or human, and to rather snidely call it, or Him, by some other gender, is an immense insult...to women. I just don't get this grasping after, and desperate yearning to be a man, or, in the larger more decandent sense, of attempting to cast the Almighty Creator as a female.
Fanned!!
"Without the Christian (and Jewish) Holy Book there would be no reference to the Christian God."
I agree with your wonderful insight, that there would be no reference to God without the Written Bible; in fact, I think God is unthinkable without writing.
If you consider that, in the most basic sense, writing is the interaction between technology and culture, between higher modes of human thought-religion, discursive cogitation, art..and the lower: transmission, documentation and material production.
Writing is both a thought and a machine; a plan and a physical device. A Mediology. The All-powerful One did not, one fine morning on a mountain at Sinai, discover an opportunity to reveal Himself in His eternity. Rather, it was a political use of technology, a singular appropriation of alphabetic writing in the context of the desert that enabled His appearance. This technogenesis of Transcendence was absolutely vital in its performance in engendering a disembodied, invisible Being.
John crammed all of this in a single sentence:..."And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And Paul in Hebrews even more boldly: "For the Word of God is full of living power...."
The Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation.
Literally eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ." is not only NOT scriptural, but deeply Babylonian. To eat anyone's flesh, or drink their blood ghastly violates Mosaic Law-its cannibalism!
Which is exactly what the priest of Baal practiced, from which we have the word canna, or Cohen: a priest, and baal. The priests of Baal, and their bloodly human sacrifice practiced the world over, including in the Altiplano in South America. The wafer and wine ritual, is an act of (indo) cannibalism.
As for blood: it was not sacred. If you ever witnessed 100 sheep sacrificed at once in Israel, as I did, saw the blood pouring onto the ground, the first question into your mind, after this revolting spectacle is: what a terrible waste of these innocent animals. That's exactly the point: the life is in the blood. Bronze age Israelites repeatedly performed this chilling act, and the blood flowed like rivers.
When did the first young Cohen, a still pimple-faced kid, suddenly see? Did he imagine the nausea of the Great God of Israel, in Who's eyes man's sin was so much more revolting and loathsome, that the Life-blood of innocent animals should be wasted, just as His own son's would one day be? The temple Priest washed and cleansed every speck of blood from the temple court-that is to say, every speck of life!
There is a God and Frankie Schaeffer is not him. It seems if God is truly God, he wouldn't think the way humans do, so his view of justice, compassion, kindness, grace, etc. might look different then ours.
What context is there that makes this acceptable?
So, to take the gruesome story in Judges 19:
Context 1 would include the state of chaos in tribal Israel; neglect of Mosaic law, as well as existence of concubines and lower status of women.
Context 2 - The main points the author of Judges continually makes is that "in those days there was no king in Israel" and that Israel repeatedly fell into evil ways until they got desperate enough to pray again, whereupon some heroic figure would come to the rescue (the judges - 1 of them, Deborah, actually female). This event is part of a larger narrative coming at the climax of the book to show just how bad things got before the institution of kingship and a strong prophetic office.
Context 3 - whole Bible context - lose any assumption that the Bible is about ideal human behavior...even the heroes like David make perfect asses of themselves ...good summary might be "God writes straight with crooked lines."
If you reject the "nasty parts" of the old testament then you might as well completely forsake Jesus and his teachings as well as many of them were "nasty" and offensive. Jesus taught about Hell (Matthew 5:29-30), and the apocalypse (Matthew 24).
Your rejection of the Bible is also a rejection of Jesus and of Christianity altogether. It wouldn't bother me so much if you peoplenwould just admit it.
If you reject the Bible then fine, but don't kid yourself into thinking your somehow closer to the "real Christianity" because of it.
What a poor substitute that is.
God cannot be, and has never been, captured in words, much less in a book. We apprehend him in the creation and, for those of us who are Christian, in the life and teachings of Jesus. We know him in the myriad ways by which he finds us and touches our hearts.
The purpose, teachings, life, death and resurrection of Jesus are all written down and codified in the New Testament. You probably never would have heard of Jesus if it were not for the events of his life being written down.
Great examples of why many reasonable people cherry pick the Bible for the nice parts and ignore the bad.
Just to comment on your statement:
"There is another choice besides rejecting religion outright or adopting an all-the-Bible-is-true fundamentalism, one too rarely made. ... embrace faith in God by thinking for themselves and openly reject the parts of one's scriptures outright that fly in the face of fact, compassion and decency."
You are correct that there is another choice other than one of two extremes (there are lots of choices, in fact). But one does not have to "embrace faith in God" to think for oneself and reject the bad parts of the Bible. One just has to think for oneself.
And once you start filtering the Bible for the good parts, in the process of thinking for yourself you might also realize the fact that, to cherry pick the bible for the good parts, you must know what the good parts are to begin with - before you even pick up the Bible. Therefore you must reason that knowledge of what is good and bad comes from somewhere else, not religion, not the Bible, but some deeper humanistic philosophy. This renders the Bible and religion unnecessary in the search for what is good, because what is good can be derived independently of religion.
The choice of rejecting religion outright can be made without being too extreme.
You used some sloppy processes here and changed the context of the verse in Timothy. A little dishonest (perhaps by mistake)...
First, you take this position, arguing for context:
"The "all Scripture" being spoken of is the Old Testament. The New Testament was just being written at the time. And these days, of course, for conservative Christians, the word "Scripture" covers "their" part of the Bible too. "
Ok, I'm with you there.
Then you take this position:
"...take every vile verse reeking of barbarity in the Bible and append the "All scripture is..." ending to it. "
Ok, I'm with you there.
Then, you proceed to use two NEW TESTAMENT verses to illustrate your "point" after just saying that verse applied to OT writings. What?? Now, _you_ have taken the 1 Tim verse out of context.
That's a little sloppy I think.
I would also argue that understanding the "wrath" of God and even the writings about God and the instructions to Israel at the time they were written takes YEARS of research to understand the context in which they were given.
You can just say, ok we serve this God who isn't really like that God so we throw out the bits we don't like. That's sloppy and intellectually dishonest. And more than a little lazy.
But hey, everyone's looking for easy answers, myself included so I can understand this methodology, even if it isn't a very good one.